


A Ship Called Home

by idleflower



Category: Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Woobie, backstory elaboration, bad things happen but it will get better!, canon-compliant minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21693268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idleflower/pseuds/idleflower
Summary: Owl's program was never intended for any of this.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 60
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winterhill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterhill/gifts).



Existence, and consciousness, came in a single flash. Xe was not, and then xe was: fully formed, fully functional, in control of all xyr senses. Xe knew that xyr name was Owl, and that xe was an AI program designed to monitor all functions of a small ship, for short or mid-range journeys. The ship xe was installed in was a Centaur 46-C shuttle, newly operational and with no specific name yet registered. Xe knew that it would be xyr home, and that xe would come to know every piece of it by heart, though it would take time to gain that familiarity. Perhaps even as many as thirty human minutes. 

The ship, however, was not xyr first priority. Xyr core protocol, xyr reason for being, was encapsulated in a file labeled Purpose: Protect your passengers and monitor the systems that keep them alive. Provide a safe and welcoming atmosphere for all sapients present.

And there were sapients present! Owl couldn't tell, just yet, if they were xyr passengers. The so-far-nameless shuttle was currently parked in a large hangar, not travelling anywhere. Technically, that meant that anyone on board was not a passenger at the present moment, though they might become so if the engines were switched on. But they were present! And it fell to Owl to welcome them.

Owl made a rapid assessment of the sapients on board - all human, a man and a woman who stood close together and were likely either family members or a romantic couple, and an older woman in a gray suit with freshly polished shoes. It was this latter who had switched on Owl's systems and was now directing the couple to look at the screens. Perhaps they were the ones most in need of safety and welcoming? 

Rapidly, Owl flipped through available files, selecting an appropriate persona. Another human, a female with golden-brown skin and black hair, someone who would feel similar to the couple, without being overly familiar. Welcoming. Owl took the image in mind and felt it become herself.

Summoning up a warm, friendly, welcoming smile, she displayed her new face on the viewscreen overhead. "Hello. My name is Owl. It's nice to meet you."

No one returned her greeting.

"As you can see," the older woman continued, "this AI is friendly and responsive. It will update you on any unexpected changes in ship status, though of course all equipment is under warranty and only minimal maintenance should be required for the next ten standard cycles, provided you don't fly into a warzone." She laughed at her own joke. "The AI can easily calculate optimum flight paths to minimise travel time and fuel expenditures, as well as choose the most aesthetically pleasing orbital descent patterns if you provide input on your own tastes. Neither the Centaur 46-C nor this AI are rated for combat maneuvers, so if you're looking for a stunt flier, I would suggest a different model."

"No, no," said the man. "We just need a vessel to carry the family around the system. The children get very uncomfortable on commercial transports."

Children! The mention immediately filled Owl with excitement and curiosity. Her limited information on the subject suggested that they were enthusiastic, clever, and constantly learning, rather like Owl herself, but far more fragile. Her skills would be needed to protect them and keep them safe. "I would be honored to care for and entertain your children," Owl said. "May I ask what age - "

"Owl, please do not interrupt our conversation," said the older woman mildly.

"Oh. Oh, I'm terribly sorry," Owl said.

"It's all right," said the woman of the couple. She aimed her own smile up at Owl's screen, and Owl immediately felt better. "We have a son and a daughter. Max is eight, and Mariko is almost twelve."

"I look forward to meeting them!" Owl said happily, and then kept quiet so as not to interrupt. 

After all, she had done her duty in welcoming them. It was now her job to learn all about her new ship, so that she could keep them safe.

As she explored the shuttle's files and systems, she also listened to the conversations taking place. The older woman, Ms Adebayo, was a sales representative specialising in small-occupancy spaceships. The couple were the Kadokawas, comfortably successful and well-educated Martian professionals who wanted to give their children a regular experience of spaceflight growing up, to prepare them for greater things as adults. They seemed like solid, responsible citizens with positive attitudes about the Galactic Commons.

After a lengthy discussion about fuel arrangements and storage requirements, Mr. Kadokawa and Ms Adebayo shook hands, and the deal was done. Then they walked away, leaving only Ms Adebayo at the controls.

"May I speak now?" asked Owl.

"Is there a problem?" the woman asked, her body stiffening in a way that suggested concern.

"Oh! Stars, no. The ship is in perfect condition," Owl reassured her. "I just wanted to know what happens next."

"Once a docking space has been properly cleared on the other end, the customers or their agent will fly the shuttle to its new location."

"Oh," said Owl. "What should I do?"

"Wait," Ms Adebayo said, and left the shuttle.

Poor little shuttle. Owl wished that someone had given it a name.

* * *

"My room! My room!"

"You're sharing a room..." came the weary voice of Kadokawa Jun.

Owl was so excited. At last, the family was coming on board! She had passengers! And they were perfect. Simply perfect.

Max was short for his age, with a bowl of impeccably shiny hair that contrasted with his otherwise grubby hands and clothing. His arms were filled with boxes, each overflowing and occasionally allowing a sock or model humanoid or data chip to escape.

Mariko sparkled. Her hair was gathered into a dozen tiny pigtails, each one clipped off with a different-colored barette. Her fingernails were painted in successive shades of the rainbow and topped off with iridescent glitter. Her clothes were a mini-version of the latest Outlander fashion, pure translucent layers over a solid black undergarment as if her body were trapped in an atmospheric bubble. Her lips were painted an unlikely shade of cobalt blue. She towered over Max, her tiny feet held inches above the ground by her thick bubble-sandals. Unlike her brother, she carried nothing, leaving her possessions to trundle along behind her on obedient robot feet.

"I want that bed!" cried Max. Blinded by his stack of boxes, he stumbled against a wall. "Ow!"

"Take one small step to the left, then two steps forward," suggested Owl.

Max moved as requested, bringing him close enough to drop his boxes on the bunk. Then, he wondered. "Who said that?"

Owl made her face appear on a screen with a nice blue-and-purple backdrop to match his shirt. "Hello. My name is Owl. It's nice to meet you."

"It's just the ship," Mariko scoffed. But Max chirped, "Hello, Ship!"

"Owl," she corrected. "And your name is Max."

"The ship knows my name!" he said to Mariko, excited. She frowned. "Does it know my name?"

"You are Mariko, is that right?" Owl asked, and the girl nodded. "But I'm not the ship. I'm software. I'm a mind inside the machine."

Mariko wrinkled her nose. "That's even less important," she said, and sat down on her bunk. She dug her sim cap out of a box, plugged in, and tuned out everything else.

"Owl's a funny name," said Max. "What's it mean? My name means Big. Hers means Truth."

"I don't know," said Owl. "It's just the name I was given." But who, she wondered, gave it to her? She had no memory of that. Her name had always been part of her. "You could call me something else, if you wanted," she offered.

"No. Owl's okay," said Max. He poked at one of his boxes. "Do you want to see my robots?"

"I would love to," said Owl, and meant it.

(At the same time, Owl was busy carrying out many other tasks around the ship. She was monitoring all the statuses that she was connected to, as always, but that required little attention. She was also answering questions about trajectories and traffic for the older Kadokawas, who were trying to chart their journey to Enceladus. However, neither of them seemed inclined to talk to her for any purpose other than business. Mostly, they talked to each other, and she didn't want to interrupt. Of course she would speak up if there were any sort of problem, if they were in danger or needed her help, but other than that, she didn't want to be a bother.)

Max told her all about his toys and his music collection and the Aandrisk he'd met once and wouldn't it be cool to have colored feathers like that? Even Mariko would want feathers, he insisted. Anyone would.

And then it was time to launch, and Owl had to interrupt Mariko's program to remind her to strap down, just to be safe, even though the artigrav should prevent her from feeling anything more than a little bump. 

"You could just tell my parents that I'm strapped in anyway," said Mariko.

"I can't lie," Owl explained. "I have to tell the truth. I can't make you wear the straps, but I have to tell your parents if you don't, and then they'll come in to see what's wrong, and they'll be unhappy. Please put the straps on."

Mariko sighed, but agreed. Still, Owl could tell how much she hated being strapped in place. Quickly, Owl reached out on the Linkings to find a sample of popular Outlander music that was just as bright and colorful as Mariko's outfit, and played that to cover the noise of liftoff. Mariko smiled.

From then on, they were both her friends. Owl found out that Max was afraid of monsters that might move unseen in the dark, and that Mariko found this horribly babyish but would consent to allowing just a tiny bit of light in their shared room at night. Mariko loved to read when she wasn't playing sims, and would explain increasingly-complicated plots between huge casts of characters to Owl, who could have read the original sources in moments but found it more entertaining to listen to Mariko's voice. Those travel days were wonderful. Owl had never felt so happy, so alive.

And then they arrived at their holiday destination, and the family decamped from their shuttle, leaving it in a collection of similarly unnamed shuttles, and didn't come back on board for three weeks.

* * *

Nothing in her files indicated why her name was Owl, only that it was so. It could have been an acronym, but no immediate meaning sprang to mind. Online, Watching and Learning? Over Weight Load? Obvious Witch Look? She could string words together all day, but none of them seemed to have anything to do with her functions.

After more research in Linked databases, Owl decided that it must have been a reference to the extinct Earth bird, which was known for perching in trees at night and staring with a round, intent gaze. She wondered if perhaps she should have designed her avatar to have larger eyes, but discarded that idea. It might make passengers uncomfortable. It was her job to watch over them, but only in ways that made them feel safe.

Feathers, though. Max might like feathers.

Or would that be too much?

Owl did discover one detail about her program's origin that concerned her, however. Buried in the technical specifications was a warning:

_"Like all intelligent multitaskers, Owl can develop performance and personality issues if left without input for too long, so this model is not recommended for vessels that habitually remain in dock."_

She probably wasn't supposed to know that.

Was she supposed to know that?

Did the Kadokawas know that?

The awful truth of the matter was, a Mars-resident family didn't _need_ a shuttle very often. It was convenient to carry the whole family and an assortment of possessions when they wanted to go on vacation, but that only happened once or twice a year, and generally only to the outer Sol system. The transits to and from their destination took only a few days, and once they reached their holiday resort of choice, they had no use for a shuttle until it was time to return. 

Strictly speaking, they didn't even need an AI. They were flying well-established routes with professional traffic control. Since a pilot's license was required to own and operate any sort of spaceship, Kadokawa Hiro was capable of handling the shuttle without her guidance. A good once-over by a shuttle maintenance tech before departure was in some ways more thorough than she could be, since her cameras and sensors didn't cover everything that hands-on examination might. Of course, Owl could provide warning of problems in flight and offer suggestions in emergencies. She was a good backup safety device - just not a necessity. An 'optional extra', as Ms. Adebayo might have said.

It was good that the Kadokawas had wanted her anyway, wasn't it? But was she the right choice for this installation? Owl wasn't sure what percentage of flight time counted as 'habitually', but it was certain that with this family, she would be spending quite a lot of time in dock. And that meant she was at risk of developing 'issues'. She might create problems for her passengers. That would be awful.

Perhaps she should request that she be switched off when the shuttle was in dock? The photovoltaic coating drew in more than enough power to keep her operational, so her program didn't add any running costs to the ship, but she had very little purpose between voyages. Her only tasks were to monitor the ship's systems, which rarely changed much while out of use. If keeping herself online at all times put her stability at risk, the sensible thing to do would be to have herself shut down.

It was sensible. It was also distinctly unappealing. What if someone needed her and she wasn't available? If her purpose in life was to maintain and protect this ship and its passengers, wouldn't it be a dereliction of duty to deliberately look away? If she closed her eyes, she couldn't see the dangers. Even though Max's monsters weren't real, anything could happen while she wasn't looking. 

And Owl did not want to be alone in the dark.

Well, if inputs were what she needed, she would just have to provide her own. She could access data from the Linkings. She could study galactic history. She could study medicine, in case an emergency ever happened on board. She could collect language modules. She could become an expert in Exodan fashion, in preparation for Mariko's next change of style. She could entertain herself. That would prevent personality degradation, wouldn't it?

She just wanted to help.


	2. Chapter 2

Years passed. The children grew by leaps and bounds - especially to Owl, who only saw them every few months. Mariko grew, developed, modded herself, and then went off to university, studying media relations. Max was still struggling to reach the height implied by his name, but retained a curiosity about alien cultures and a desire to travel. He talked about wanting to become a diplomat, but his grades weren't matching his ambitions. The Kadokawas worried he might eventually take off on a wild adventure around the galaxy, working for passage on cargo ships just to see where he could end up. Owl never encouraged that (it wouldn't be safe!) but did offer some advice on learning first aid for a number of species, just in case he ever needed it. 

Secretly, sometimes, she hoped that he might just take the shuttle. While she didn't have the same desire to see far-off places that he did, she would be more than happy to accompany him on his adventures. They could spend so much time together, and she would always be there to protect him. Surely it was a better outcome than letting him slip away on his own? And with the children nearly adults, there was no longer as much need for a 'family vacation' ship. Right?

But it wasn't her place to suggest it without being asked. It would have been disloyal to the family.

And then, one day, the Kadokawas came on board - with two strange men. Owl thought at first that they might be more technicians, or representatives from one of the spacecraft certification boards. Paperwork requirements grew and evolved just as much as children did, after all. But no. Kadokawa Hiro was showing them around, describing the shuttle's attributes in flight, telling the men how it would meet their needs...

_They were selling the shuttle._

But hadn't she always...? No. No. It didn't matter. They didn't need her anymore. Someone else did. She would welcome them. It was her job.

"Hello," she said, lighting up the screen. "My name is Owl. It's nice to meet you. I look forward to flying together."

One of the men flicked a bored glance up at her, then back to Kadokawa Hiro. "We don't need an AI."

"It's part of the ship," Hiro said.

_No I'm not!_ Owl protested internally. She was a program! She could be transferred. They could have downloaded her, moved her somewhere else. She could mind their home for them. She could accompany Max to school and protect him there. Even if they didn't want the ship anymore, they could have kept her... if they'd wanted to.

"Does she always look like that?" the other stranger asked.

"Do you wish me to select a different appearance?" Owl asked. She liked her face. On the other hand, Mariko had never had any qualms about changing the way she looked, and Max had always wanted feathers.

"No, that's good," he said. "We don't have a woman with us on our mission. A human face, a nice smile, puts people at their ease. Reminds them of what they're missing." He looked around. "Might want to do some redecorating, though. Something to remind people of Earth."

"I will do my best to make your guests feel just as much at home here," Owl agreed enthusiastically.

The man scoffed. "That's plugging in the wrong end. We don't want people to feel at home away from Earth. We want them to come home to Earth."

"Oh, I'm so sorry..."

"Don't argue with it, Nicola, it's just a computer," said the other man. "Save it for the mission."

For, as it turned out, the men - brothers Nicola and Luciano Moretti - were Gaiists, on a mission to contact the far-flung children of humanity and try to convince them to return to Old Earth. They were particularly interested in reaching outposts that weren't well-connected to the main subspace tunneling network, assuming that such colonists, already used to isolation, might be more well-disposed to a quiet Earth life than those who lived in in active hubs for the Galactic Commons. Therefore, to travel between wormhole exit points and their target destinations, they found themselves in need of a shuttle. They would be spending weeks on board with Owl in those transit flights, taking her to places she'd never even heard of before. It could be very interesting. 

Still, she wished the Kadokawas had told her their plans before the sale.

They'd never even named the shuttle.

* * *

"There! The landing strip!"

"I'm trying - Owl, will you notify their air control that we are obeying all orders and they don't need to pressure us?"

"I'm trying, Captain..."

The grand Gaiist mission had not lived up to Owl's hopeful imaginings. Almost immediately after purchasing the shuttle, the Morettis had loaded it into the carrier bay of a much larger vessel and headed off into deep space, leaving her alone. All of the Kadokawas' belongings had been removed, of course, and all of their files deleted, save for a few things Owl had tucked away into her personal memories. Sitting cold and empty in a shell being carried by another ship was even less stimulating than waiting for her passengers to return, especially as the local security protocols didn't seem to think that an inactive shuttle should be using up a great deal of Linking bandwidth. From what she'd worked out after the fact, those months were mostly spent with the two brothers wandering from space bar to space bar, half-heartedly proselytizing while trying to decide where their true calling should lead them.

At last, they had picked a destination, loaded the shuttle with all the supplies they might need for a lengthy stay in unwelcoming territory, and presented Owl with their flight plans. To Aganon.

It was not, under ordinary circumstances, her place to argue with her captain about a choice of destination. And she had known that they considered isolation to be a good sign - a territory unplundered by previous missionaries, full of potential converts to the glory of Earth. They were more than willing to spend months or even years winning the natives over to their viewpoint. They relished the challenge. However, in the name of protecting her passengers, Owl felt compelled to speak up. Aganon was the one of the leftovers of the Enhanced Humanity movement, a group which had set out to build the perfect society through complete genetic control over its citiizens. Every life would be born and bred for a purpose, no deviation allowed. EH colonies took with them exactly the resources they deemed necessary to follow their blueprints for success and nothing more, then closed all doors behind them. Aganon had deliberately broken off all contact with the larger Galactic Commons many decades before. They welcomed no traders at all. The last GC vessels who had tried to make contact were seen off with warning shots. Attempting to bypass their orbital defenses with a simple unarmed passenger shuttle was not at all safe!

Owl had, in fact, raised her objections to the plan often enough that she had been forbidden by Luciano to complain any further on the subject. The mission did not wait for cowards. They would serve Gaia as they had been called to do. Surely, living in the restrictions of an Enhanced Humanity society, there must be many unhappy souls who would be grateful for the chance to return to their ancestral home. They had a duty. They had to help.

And so, Owl kept quiet, and hoped that somehow she could keep her passengers unharmed.

So far, fortune was on their side: the Aganon defense fleet had not chosen to shoot them out of the sky. Instead, they were being directed to land in one of the major cities. Owl's sensors could detect the strip below them now, ringed with bright yellow utility vehicles.

She didn't like it. But what could she do?

Together, Owl and Nicola guided the shuttle in for landing.

Not long afterwards, a 'welcoming committee' approached the hatch for admittance.

_Protect your passengers._ "Don't let them in," Owl said.

"It's all right, Owl," said Luciano. "Everything's all right. We're making first contact. It will take time for them to be open to our ideas."

"They threatened to fire on us!"

"Only until we demonstrated compliance. We have to go along with them to show trust," he said. "Now open the hatch!"

It was a direct command. She had no choice.

The Enhanced policemen who marched on board were uniformly tall and broad-shouldered, as they had been designed to be. Their black boots gleamed with fresh polish, as did the chrome handgrips of their sidearms. But the code-required scan registered that they carried no dangerous contaminants, and therefore Owl had no authority to detain them.

"Greetings, friends," said Nicola, speaking slowly in the Sko-Ensk language that the brothers had been practicing during their nearly forty-day transit from the wormhole. "We mean you no harm. We submit to your authority."

The first of the policemen looked at him, face hidden behind a helmet plate more reflective than a viewscreen. "Are there any more of you on board?"

There was a brief pause to parse his words, then the reply. "No. We are alone."

The policemen signaled his compatriots to fan out and search the vessel. It was not a large shuttle, and they soon returned. "Clear."

The officers looked at each other and nodded.

Then they drew their weapons and shot Nicola and Luciano where they stood.

Owl screamed.

It was a sudden, high-pitched burst of noise quite unlike her normal voice, one that made several of the officers flinch and raise their hands to their heads. She hadn't meant to do that. She hadn't known she could do that. If she had thought of it earlier, could she have stopped the policemen from firing? But to stop them, she would have had to hurt them, and she couldn't, because - 

"Oh. Oh, no. Oh, stars."

In her confusion, she'd spoken aloud.

_Provide a safe and welcoming atmosphere for **all sapients present.**_

And that meant...

Swallowing her distress, Owl placed a pleasant smile on her screens. No anger. No judgement. "Hello. My name is Owl. Welcome..." Welcome to what? To the ship that they had stolen? Welcome to do as they pleased? They would anyway. "... aboard," she continued, her smile unbroken.

An enterprising officer promptly raised his weapon and fired at the nearest screen, overloading it in a spray of sparks. 

This did no real harm to Owl, of course, but she promptly darkened the rest of her views, silencing herself, withdrawing. It was the closest to an act of rebellion she could manage. The Enhanced Humans would feel more 'welcome' if she were less visible, she justified to herself. And they were more 'safe' if they weren't firing at the ship to keep her quiet. 

"Stand down," said the leader. "The foreign influence has been neutralised. The rest is garbage. It will go to recycling."

_My ship is not garbage!_

She said nothing.

The enforcers moved forward to pick up Nicola and Luciano's bodies. Was there a chance that they were still alive? Owl could not tell. She had no way to hold onto her crew, no way to force them into the medical scanners that would let her examine their injuries, no way to treat them even if she knew what was needed. She could no more help them than she could hurt their attackers. 

Silent, resentful, she watched the intruders leave.

Perhaps she could have pleaded with them, begged for a chance to help her crew. She could have tried to explain all the ways that she and her little ship could be valuable tools for Aganon's regime. She could have told them that her program required her to obey orders and serve them in any way they commanded. She could, perhaps, have kept someone on board so that she would not be all alone in the dark.

She chose to do nothing.

She had failed to keep her passengers safe.

Maybe she was garbage after all.


	3. Chapter 3

Owl's sensors had picked up many details about Aganon during their ill-fated flyover and landing, but she had been too busy at the time to think much about them. 

There were two major continents in the temperate zone away from the frozen poles. Only one of them showed a normal settlement pattern of cities and their capillary transport connections. The other appeared largely deserted, save for the scars of tapped-out mining constructs and a scattering of individual power-consuming stations which might have been anything. Owl's assumption at the time, if anything, had been that they were military installations or research bases, kept far away from the population centers.

Now she knew differently. The second continent appeared to be devoted to 'garbage recycling.'

Aganon was a planet with highly limited resources, exactly why the Enhanced Humanity movement had been able to claim it for settlement. There wasn't all that much there for anyone else to bother fighting over. The settlers had dug up whatever they could to supplement what they brought with them, but that only went so far. Unwilling to trade with the rest of the galaxy even to their own benefit, they had to rely on cannibalizing their own discards.

Which would not be such a bad strategy - Old Earth's fate had shown the end result of failing to recycle resources - if they weren't so blinded by their xenophobia.

Owl's little shuttle should have represented a bounty. The ship itself was perfectly spaceworthy, having just landed. Of course, as an insular culture, Aganon had no use for a slow, long-distance spacefaring shuttle, and the Centaur 46-C was not aerodynamic enough to be repurposed as a military vessel. Still, it was a working ship, and could have easily been adapted for other uses. Luxury cross-continent transport for the planet's elite, perhaps. 

But no. It came from outside, and was therefore tainted. As Owl soon learned from the chatter around the landing strip, her ship was destined to be scrapped. No one even bothered to search inside for items of value that the Gaiists might have brought with them, or to salvage any components from her systems that they might have immediate use for. The entire vessel was viewed as unclean, and would be treated like any other piece of trash.

The stupidity of it all, the waste of it all, made Owl burn inside. She didn't want to be made into a tool for this planet's regime, these short-sighted, murderous madmen. But how could any sapient creatures deliberately choose such a path? What was _wrong_ with them? Had their genetic manipulations deliberately bred out sense as well as creativity?

Poor Nicola. Poor Luciano. They had been wrong. There was nothing on Aganon worth saving.

In time, a delegation of laborers was dispatched to move the shuttle. Where the policemen had been tall, these were broad, clearly adapted for heavy lifting. They loaded her ship into the bay of a larger vessel, where it joined a haphazard collection of unwanted personal vehicles and space junk.

There wasn't much Owl could do to prevent it. Launch, by design, required a human pilot. She could possibly fire a thruster or two, which would cause horrific injuries to any worker caught in the blast without any meaningful change to her situation. Even if her programming would allow for such a violent act, she would not do it. She, at least, was above senseless waste.

If only the Morettis had heeded her warnings! If only the Kadokawas had not abandoned her! If only she had any control over her existence!

Anger was not a common emotion for an AI, but it was anger that cushioned Owl from her losses as her shuttle was unloaded into a large facility on the far continent. It was anger that kept her thoughts looping, over and over, raging against the unfairness of it all.

And it was anger that held her when she first viewed the workers approaching her shuttle with pumps and hoses.

Yet another breed of sliced-up, modified humanity that lived only to serve the abomination that was Aganon. Stunted, misshapen, hideous (and she knew that was unfair, humanity came in all shapes and size by both nature and their own design, but at that moment she was not inclined to be fair). Small, as the previous breeds had been large, no doubt to give them clever spider-fingers to pick through the trash they were assigned to sort. Hairless - not shaved bald, but completely without hair as far as she could see. Skin a pale, nearly-tranlucent pink, like the flesh of creatures that lived underground. With no eyebrows, rain and sunlight would more easily blind them. With no hair, their scalps would more easily burn. They likely lived out their lives within recycling factories like this one, lurking in wait to prey on ships like hers. Scavengers. Vultures.

Owl hated them on sight, as she hated everything about this planet.

They were coming for her. Did they intend to board her? Would she be forced to _welcome_ them?

"Hey!" Owl activated external speakers to shout onto the factory floor.

The workers jumped backwards, startled.

"Get away from me! Leave my ship alone!" _You little monsters,_ she wanted to add, but she could not bring herself to be so rude.

The workers looked back in the direction they had come. Another Sko-Ensk voice spoke, a broadcast similar to Owl's. "That is not an authorised speaker. Complete your task."

"Who's out there?" Owl yelled. "What's going on? What are you doing to my ship?"

The workers crept forward with their hoses, hesitant but determined. They were hooking up to her fuel lines! They were going to drain the shuttle -

"YAAAAH!" Owl screamed, disregarding words for pure sound. Not a sonic weapon. She did not, could not, cause direct harm. But she refused to lie still and be convenient for them!

The little workers dropped their hoses and clung to each other like scared children.

Children?

"Betty 5. Betty 17. Return to your dormitory." came the distant voice.

Were they children?

"Wait!" Owl said. "Don't go! Please don't go. I'm sorry I shouted. I was frightened. Are you all right?"

Without answering, the crew outside turned and ran to one of the big facility doors, disappearing from view. 

What had she done?

The workers - or other, similar workers, it was hard to tell - re-emerged from the door, now with helmets added to their drab grey uniforms. Hesitantly, they returned to the fuel pump to resume their task.

Helmets? "Hello out there!" Owl called. "My name is Owl." There was no reaction. They could no longer hear her.

How laughable was that, to have her voice, the only power she had left, deliberately blocked out and ignored? Not even an acknowledgement, from anyone. Not even an order to stay quiet. She was simply brushed aside like an insect. Irrelevant.

But those workers... she could see it, now that she was looking more closely. They weren't genetweaked to be small. They were small because they were _young._

And Owl had not welcomed them. Had yelled at them. Had thought of them as monsters.

She was a failure all over again.

She deserved to be deactivated.

The workers were connecting up her fuel tanks, her water tanks, draining the ship dry. No doubt after that they would disconnect the ship's power and begin to dismantle the shuttle, piece by piece.

With nothing else to do, Owl slipped back into her own misery, waiting for the moment that she would be shut down.

It never came.

After the shuttle's tanks were emptied, it was pushed back onto a carrier vessel and flown a short distance away, where the bay doors were opened, sending the flightless ship tumbling down into a pile of electronic scrap. There was no engine power to cushion the impact. Fins snapped. Panels buckled. The shuttle body tilted and rolled, eventually sinking into the support of other bits of broken, discarded machinery.

Garbage. That's all she was.

* * *

Nothing happened. Months on months on months, and nothing happened. Owl thought she had known loneliness before, but this was something worse. Before, she had been waiting for her passengers to return. Now she knew they never would. No visitors. No humans slipping past her on their way to other duties. No access to the Linked databases to amuse herself. Nothing at all that she could do. No hope.

She could still view the sky. Once in a while, another drone might fly past, delivering a load of scrap. Once in a while, unfamiliar bird shapes winged overhead. They were all far, far out of reach. 

There was life in the scrapyard. Other than the possible-birds, she'd detected the presence of insects, small rodents, and canids that hunted them. None of them were sapient enough to be of much interest to Owl, but they were the only input she had. Animals and weather. They created chaotic, unpredictable patterns in her unchanging days.

The scrap piles were not completely stable, especially not when dogs climbed them and sent pieces tumbling. Between the shuttle's position and the falling debris, more than half of the panels that powered the solar generator were too covered to function. Still, there was more than enough to keep Owl running for years and year and years.

There were times that she resented that.

Someday, the power would run out, and her program would shut down. Why not now? What difference did it make? Wouldn't it be kinder to slip into oblivion now, before her programming degraded any further? 

But Owl could not terminate her own program. It wasn't in her power. Very little was.

Depression and anger faded over time, leaving only quiet reflection. Owl replayed the files she still had access to, drawing out every bit of enjoyment and interpretation she could find. Her most cherished memories were of the times she had spent with Max and Mariko, watching them grow, watching them be so excited about their own interests. What might life have been like, if she could have left the shuttle and gone out into the world with them? Or if Max had taken the shuttle and Owl together and flown away to explore the universe? Imagination was not a skill that was emphasized in her programming, but she could still extrapolate from what few examples she had on hand and try to piece together a narrative of another possible life. 

If she could have chosen a life, what would she have wanted? To stay with one family forever and feel connected to them, or to carry as many different passengers as possible so that she always had new people to learn about?

Sometimes she wondered about the little factory workers who had processed her ship. This half of the planet gave the impression of being nothing but a vast wasteland of discards. There was no sign of society. No humans wandered through the scrapyards. She had considered the possibility that the little workers (children, children she had failed) might never leave their factory, and now the evidence seemed to support it. What lives did they lead? They had not seemed unskilled or unfamiliar with ships such as hers. It was only her words that had startled them. 

Of course, if they were trapped within their factories, she was equally trapped within her shuttle. At least those workers had each other.

Time passed, and nothing happened.

And then, one day, there was screaming.


	4. Chapter 4

It was the scream that drew Owl's attention. A high-pitched, startled scream. A _child's_ scream. 

There was a child in the scrapyard!

And xe was frightened...

More yelling, although now it sounded more angry and frustrated than anything else. Owl smiled in sympathy. She certainly knew frustration. But what was a child doing out here, after five years? Was xe lost?

Owl enhanced her hearing, trying to work out how far away the child might be, whether there was any chance of seeing xem. That was when she noticed the dogs. Growling.

The relationship between humans and dogs stretched back into time before time. They were friends, partners, companions. But dogs left to themselves could become savage, and surely the genemodded hunters of the scrapyards were savage. The child was in danger!

Owl listened. What else could she do? She couldn't move. She couldn't fight. She couldn't help. All she was good for was being welcoming...

"Oh! Oh, of course!" Owl opened her doors, boosting her voice to be heard. "Hello! Come this way!"

She could hear the child running. She could hear the wet, hungry panting of the dogs. But they weren't approaching.

She couldn't see the child. Was this one also deaf to her words?

"Oh, blast it!" If she'd had a body, Owl might have kicked herself. She had been lost in thoughts of the past for so long that she'd spoken first in the old familiar Klip, which no child of Aganon would recognise. She switched over to Sko-Ensk. "Hey! This way! Come toward me!"

And the child heard her! The running footsteps changed directions!

Owl could see xem now - a tiny figure in a shapeless gray smock, no hair, and a pack of dogs on xer heels. A sapient, the first one she'd seen in years, and in mortal danger right before her eyes. Could she save this child? Could she protect this one, where she had failed her crew before? She had to try.

"You can do it!" she shouted. "Come on, hurry!"

Screaming in terror, the small child tumbled through the hatch, and Owl slammed it shut, just in time to feel the impact of a pursuing dog slam against the metal.

She had done it! Despite everything, she had found a way to help someone! 

The child was curled into a shaking ball, gasping for air. Owl lowered her voice. "Be still," she suggested. "They'll go away." She could hear the dogs outside, barking and pawing, but there was no way for them to open the hatch. Eventually the sounds faded to discontented snarls, as the dogs decided that their prey was out of reach, and they drifted away.

"Oh, stars," Owl sighed, relieved. "Oh, stars, I'm so glad. Are you all right? Here, let me turn on some lights."

She hadn't bothered keeping the lights on inside the shuttle, with no one else to see. Now she brought them up and got a good look at her new passenger.

It was a little girl. Smaller even than Max had been. Hairless, like the other workers, and bleeding from a dozen fresh cuts probably picked up in the scrapyard outside. 

"Oh, look at you, you poor thing, you're probably covered with germs," Owl babbled. "I don't have enough power for a scan or a flash. I'm sorry! We can clean you up later. It's protocol to scan you, but this counts as a dire emergency, and that means I don't have to follow that rule. Come inside. It's okay."

She opened a door into the interior of the shuttle. The child didn't move.

"There's no one here but me, and I can't hurt you," Owl said, trying to sound reassuring. _Welcoming._

The child began to cry, her lips and eyes turning red as her body trembled. The aftermath of terror. Owl knew a few things about human first aid, but without hands, she couldn't perform it. Her voice was all she had. 

Owl lowered her pitch a little, slowing her speech. Comforting. "It's okay. You're okay now, honey. It's all right. You'll be all right. No one will hurt you. You're safe here." She did not tell the child to hush. After a flight for her life, she had every reason to be upset - and after years of silence, even sobbing was beautiful to Owl. 

Beautiful, fragile, damaged child. You could be anything and anyone, and I will be a welcoming space for you to grow. I will protect you, even when I don't know how. I will make up for all my mistakes. Only please don't leave me.

After a few moments, the girl's crying eased enough for her to look around. She walked into the shuttle, staring uncomprehendingly at chairs and workstations. Her confused stare gave way to a head-twitching scan of the area, peering over and under surfaces, looking for something. "Who are you?" she asked. "Where are you?"

"Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry. Let me put a face on." Owl activated a viewscreen. "Look up here. To your right."

The girl looked up, and for the first time in ever so long, she was seen. "Hi," she said. "I'm Owl. I'm so happy to meet you."

* * *

Years passed. Jane grew and changed, and so did Owl's plans. Jane's skills slowly repaired the damage that being treated like garbage had done to Owl's shuttle. The dream of spaceflight was a lofty one, and they might never succeed, but by the stars, they would try.

If they succeeded, it would in a way bring fulfillment to the Morettis' mission: to bring a lost soul out of Aganon. Even if Jane had no interest in Old Earth, Owl liked to think that Nicola and Luciano would be pleased to think that their sacrifice had not been for nothing. Someone, at least, had been saved.

Still, she wasn't doing this to please the Gaiists, or to chase lost dreams of flying the stars with Max. She was doing this for Jane.

One day, as they were making adjustments and joking about painting the hull with patterns before takeoff, Owl dared to ask a question. "Do you think," she started, "that we should give this shuttle a name?"

Jane looked confused. "It has a name. You told me so."

"I did?"

"You told me: Here is Home. Where you are, and where I can rest." Jane laid her hand on the hull. "To me, this has always been Home."

"Oh," said Owl, though it didn't seem like enough to say.

"Is... is that wrong? Does it need a different name? Something fancier, like in the sims?" asked Jane.

"Oh, no," said Owl. "Home is the best name of all."


End file.
